The Triumph and Tragedy of Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land

The widely praised book distorts history and hurts the chances for peace.

Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land may well be the most commercially successful, yet also critically acclaimed book by an Israeli writer explaining his country’s complicated history to American readers. It made the New York Times best seller list for several weeks and was praised profusely in most major book review outlets, including a rave by the New Republic’s literary editor Leon Wieseltier on the cover of the Times’ Sunday book review. The review’s editors then selected Shavit’s book as one of the 100 best books of the year. Meanwhile, over at the Grey Lady’s editorial pages, columnist Thomas Friedman chimed in, touting Shavit’s book as a “must-read” and recommended that President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu read it before their next contentious telephone conversation. Shavit also won the National Jewish Book Award in the category of Jewish history and has spoken to overwhelmingly appreciative audiences at Jewish Y’s and synagogues around the country.

Some of this adulation is well deserved. Shavit is the most talented Israeli journalist of his generation. At his home base at Haaretz (often described as Israel’s New York Times) he is a triple threat – a prolific columnist, reporter and member of the paper’s editorial board. Haaretz is even more reflexively left-liberal than the Times. The paper’s editorial pages are frequently graced with political rants by an assortment of post-Zionists, postmodernists and Marxists. In this mélange, Shavit stands out as one of the only adults in the room. Like most of his Haaretz colleagues Shavit started out as an enthusiast for the Oslo accords and the peace process, but then experienced second thoughts. He broke with the Israeli left after becoming convinced by facts on the ground – i.e. the suicide bombers of the second Intifada – that the Palestinians were not reliable partners for peace or for achieving a compromise, two-state solution.

Shavit writes beautifully in Hebrew and English. Indeed, My Promised Land was composed in English (there is no Hebrew edition) and targeted at the American market, particularly American Jews. Before publication the author told friends that his book was positioned to appeal to hard line supporters of Israel as well as dovish groups, like J Street, more critical of Israeli government policies. Each side, he hoped, would find something in the book that appealed to their own perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

So far, Shavit’s hopes have been realized. Thus, the liberal New Yorker published an edited excerpt from Shavit’s long chapter describing the Israeli army’s brutal expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from the city of Lydda during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. (In his acknowledgements, Shavit credits New Yorker editor, David Remnick, for encouraging him to write the book and for “going over the manuscript.”) “Lydda is the black box of Zionism,” Shavit writes in the New Yorker. “The truth is that Zionism could not bear the Arab city of Lydda.” At almost the same time, the Wall Street Journal published a different excerpt from the book under the title, “In Israel, a Dream Made Real.” In this portion Shavit declares that, “In Israel, the Jewish Renaissance was achieved by the remarkable success of Zionism” and that “one can see the transformation of the Jews in the Zionist century. We had to come here, and once we came, we did wonders.”

Some reviewers of My Promised Land have suggested that Shavit’s ability to balance two seemingly contradictory truths – the “remarkable success of Zionism” and the “black box of Zionism” – is precisely the quality that makes the book so compelling. “Shavit knows how to express solidarity and criticism simultaneously,” writes Leon Wieseltier. “He proposes that Zionism was historically miraculous and he proposes that Zionism was historically culpable.”

Measured by word volume alone, Shavit’s book tilts more towards the glorious side of Zionism’s ledger than to its supposedly darker side. There are four or five extremely moving chapters depicting the Zionist revolution’s “miraculous” accomplishments: reclaiming and cultivating the land, rescuing a people devastated by the shadows of the Holocaust, building a robust entrepreneurial economy and creating an artistic and cultural renaissance. And all of these “wonders” took place even while the people of Israel remained under constant military threat to their national survival.

Shavit’s Lydda chapter is based on such a gross historical distortion that it overwhelms his testimonial to the positive side of Zionism.

Shavit devotes only one full chapter to Zionism’s “black box” – an account of what was done to the Arabs of Lydda by Israeli military forces during three days in July, 1948. Yet, contrary to Wieseltier, it makes no sense to balance Shavit’s condemnation of Zionism’s foul deed at Lydda by citing the book’s depiction of the Zionist project’s many admirable accomplishments. The balancing act doesn’t work because Shavit’s Lydda chapter is based on such a gross historical distortion that it overwhelms his testimonial to the positive, miraculous side of Zionism and, in effect, lends support to the Palestinian movement’s own historical narrative – called the Nakba – of an innocent, indigenous nation dispossessed and ethnically cleansed by perfidious European Jewish settlers. Shavit’s perverse interpretation of Lydda not only damages the cause of defending Zionism against its many present day enemies, but it also undermines the possibility of a realistic, compromise peace with the Palestinians.

Surprisingly, there is little new in Shavit’s factual description of the events in Lydda from July 11 to July 13, 1948. All serious historians of the period have acknowledged what happened in the Palestinian Arab city during those three violent days. What Shavit does is to take an old story out of context and give it a moral weight it can’t bear.

Immediately after David Ben Gurion declared Israel’s independence on May 14, 1948 the new state was invaded by five Arab armies. The most effective of these military forces was the Jordanian Arab Legion, commanded by British officers. The Legion laid siege to Jerusalem and eventually forced all Jews living in the Old City out at bayonet point. The Jordanians also came close to cutting the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thus endangering the heartland of the Jewish State. Lydda, (with a population of over 40,000 Arabs) was just 11 miles east of Tel Aviv on the route to Jerusalem and in the area assigned to the future Palestinian state by the 1947 United Nations partition plan. (The partition proposal was accepted by the Jews, but rejected by the Arabs, which is why Lydda became a key battleground in 1948.) In early July, IDF commanders determined that they must remove the Legion’s threat to Israel’s largest city and try to secure the road to Jerusalem. Military necessity dictated that Lydda and several adjoining villages must be conquered and the Jordanian force in the area pushed eastward away from Tel Aviv.

As Shavit describes the action, an IDF armored column sped through Lydda on the morning of July 11, firing at everything in its way. After a 47 minute battle more than a hundred Arab civilians and nine Israeli soldiers were dead. “By evening,” Shavit writes, “Zionism has taken the city of Lydda.” However, on the next day Jordanian armored cars suddenly returned to the city. Israeli soldiers were fired on again, including by armed Palestinian irregulars. Some of the Israeli forces then began shooting in all directions and throwing hand grenades into homes where they believed the shooting was coming from. The second wave of violence resulted in the deaths of another 200 Lydda residents. “Zionism carries out a massacre in the city of Lydda,” Shavit writes.

News of the renewed fighting reached IDF headquarters, where the senior commander, Yigal Allon, asked Ben Gurion what should be done with the Arabs of Lydda. According to Shavit, “Ben Gurion waves his hand: Deport them” Operations officer Yitzchak Rabin then issues the order: “The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly, without regard to age.” The next day, July 13, 1948, thirty-five thousand Palestinian Arabs are on the road out of Lydda, walking east toward the Jordanian lines with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Shavit’s bare factual account of the fighting in Lydda is consistent with several histories of the first Arab-Israeli war, including Benny Morris’s volume, 1948, widely regarded as the definitive history of the conflict. (Morris is known as the dean of Israel’s “new” or “revisionist” historians, because of his pioneering scholarly work in the 1980’s showing that Israel was far more responsible for creating the Palestinian refugee problem than had previously been acknowledged by the Jewish State’s leaders.) But in his broader, historical interpretation of the events in Lydda and his sweeping moral judgment, Shavit goes far beyond the account by the revisionist Morris.

“Lydda is our black box,” Shavit writes. “In it lies the dark secret of Zionism. The truth is that Zionism could not bear Lydda. From the very beginning there was a substantial contradiction between Zionism and Lydda. If Zionism was to be, Lydda could not be. If Lydda was to be, Zionism could not be. In retrospect it’s all too clear. When Herbert Bentwich [a 19th century British Zionist leader, who happens to have been Shavit’s great grandfather] saw Lydda from the white tower of Ramleh in April, 1897, he should have seen that if a Jewish state was to exist in Palestine, an Arab Lydda could not exist at its center.”

It’s mindboggling that a book that won a prestigious award for Jewish history can include so many historical untruths in one short paragraph.

It’s mindboggling that a book that won a prestigious award for Jewish history can include so many historical untruths in one short paragraph. If it’s the case, as Shavit claims, that “Zionism could not bear Lydda,” one would like to ask the author to explain how Zionism managed to bear the Arab city of Nazereth, where there were no expulsions (the city’s population is now 60,000) or how Zionism bears the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm (population 50,000) in the densely Arab populated area called “the triangle” in the center of Israel.

Shavit claims that the early Zionists were blind to the existence of another people living on the land they coveted for their own state. Thus he argues, somewhat preposterously, that his own great grandfather should have known in 1897 that a future Jewish state would mean the end of Arab Lydda. Shavit’s judgment about moral responsibility for Lydda may suit his narrative of Zionism’s original sin, but it runs counter to the historical record. There is overwhelming evidence (including even in Shavit’s own chapter) that the expulsion order at Lydda was ad hoc and contingent, rather than historically preordained. The decision was made because of the facts on the ground in a war launched by the Arab states and by Palestinian militias with the express intention of annihilating the Jews of Palestine.

At the beginning of the war, the Secretary General of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Azzam, vowed: “This war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the crusades.” The leader of the Palestinian armed militias during the 1948 war was the ex- Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Al- Husseini actively collaborated with Hitler in the implementation of the Final Solution. In a meeting in Gaza in 1947 he was reelected Chairman of the Arab Higher Committee, the political body representing the Palestinians, and then made it clear that the objective of the 1948 war would be the annihilation of the Jews of Palestine. Shavit mentions none of this essential historical context when condemning Zionism for the expulsion of the residents of Lydda.

Nor does Shavit take into account any of several well documented counterexamples to the expulsion of the Lydda Arabs. In the mixed city of Haifa, for example, the Jewish mayor Shabtai Levy met with Arab leaders just before the war broke out. He was in tears as he begged them to tell their own people to stay in their homes and promised that no harm would befall them. The Arab leaders told Levy that they had been ordered out – ;and even threatened – ;by al-Husseini and must obey. The meeting between Mayor Levy and the Arab notables was graphically described in Palestine Betrayed, a 2010 book on the 1948 events by Israeli historian Ephraim Karsh. As Karsh recounts, a witness present at the meeting was Major General Hugh Stockwell, the British military commander of Haifa and hardly a friend of Zionism. Karsh quotes General Stockwell telling the Arab leaders, “You have made a foolish decision.” Within days of the meeting the Haifa Arabs began streaming out of the city.

You might think that having morally judged Zionism for the crime of Lydda, Shavit would say something similar about the Haifa Arabs who were forced out of their homes by their own Palestinian leaders, as well as acknowledging Mayor Levy, who tried to keep the Arab residents of his city from becoming refugees.

You might also say that it is Shavit who is blind to the reality of Palestinian history and to their own unacknowledged “black box” – the violent rejection, fueled by Islamist beliefs, of any Jewish presence on the land. Shavit says almost nothing about the many Arab massacres of Jews, the expulsions of Jews from the cities of Hebron and Jerusalem, and the fact that not a single Jew was allowed to remain in any area occupied by the Arab armies during the 1948 war.

Another troubling aspect of Shavit’s Lydda chapter is its lack of scholarly citation. The book carries no endnotes at all. Instead Shavit says that the material for the Lydda chapter came from “numerous accounts of the traumatic events recounted to me in the early 1990s by [a number of veterans of the fighting.]” Perhaps Shavit or his New Yorker editor realized that relying on 20 year old oral interviews for his interpretation of Lydda would invite some serious evidentiary questions. So for the New Yorker article Shavit added that he had also used Benny Morris’s 2008 book, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. Rather than provide credibility for the Lydda chapter, however, this late citation of Morris raises even more questions about the validity of Shavit’s historical interpretation.

In 1948 and several other books Benny Morrisrejected the thesis that the Zionists were either blind to the presence of the Arabs on the land, or that the Arab refugee problem was preordained. Morris does not regard the expulsion of the Lydda Arabs as a metaphor for the Zionist movement’s treatment of the Palestinian Arabs. Contrary to Shavit and other leftist, revisionist historians, Morris asserts in 1948 that the Palestinian calamity was “born of war, not by design.” One more item that is in Morris’s book, but goes unmentioned by Shavit, is that after the expulsion order some Arabs managed to remain in Lydda and over the years more Arabs moved to the city. Today Lydda has a substantial minority of Arab citizens.

In a 2010 letter to the Irish Times, Morris summed up his views on the issue of moral responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem. It is worth quoting Morris, Shavit’s one scholarly source for his Lydda chapter, at length:

“In defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the UN General Assembly Resolution of November 29th, 1947, [the Palestinians] launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of aborting the emergence of the Jewish state and perhaps destroying that community. But they lost; and one of the results was the displacement of 700,000 of them from their homes. . . . On the local level, in dozens of localities around Palestine, Arab leaders advised or ordered the evacuation of women and children or whole communities.”

“Most of Palestine’s 700,000 ‘refugees’ fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops.”

“The displacement of the 700,000 Arabs who became “refugees” – ;and I put the term in inverted commas, as two-thirds of them were displaced from one part of Palestine to another and not from their country (which is the usual definition of a refugee) – ;was not a “racist crime” . . . but the result of a national conflict and a war, with religious overtones, from the Muslim perspective, launched by the Arabs themselves.”

For the New Yorker’s version of Shavit’s Lydda chapter a new lead paragraph was added that attempts to provide contemporary relevance to Shavit’s account of the events that occurred 65 years ago. Noting recent efforts by the Obama administration to advance negotiations and “achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” the paragraph asks whether this effort might succeed where others have failed. “It’s possible that the answer can be found in the history of Lydda,” Shavit writes. “Anyone striving for Middle East peace must acknowledge the tragedy of Lydda and comprehend its implications.”

In reality, Shavit’s interpretation of the Lydda expulsions and the attention his book is receiving is likely to make it harder – not easier – to achieve peace. It’s surprising that someone as sophisticated about the pathologies of the Palestinian movement as Shavit is doesn’t see this clearly. The metaphor of Zionism’s “black box” plays directly into the false Palestinian narrative of the Nakba, which is now the single most important obstacle to achieving a realistic, compromise peace.

The Arabic word Nakba connotes a historical catastrophe inflicted on an innocent and blameless people, in this case the Palestinians, by an overpowering outside force (international Zionism). Thus on May 16, 2011, the New York Times published an op-ed by Mahmoud Abbas in which he declared that “shortly after” the U.N. General Assembly voted to partition the “Palestinian homeland, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.”

The Nakba is the heart of the Palestinians’ backward-looking national narrative. Every year, on the anniversary of Israel’s independence, more and more Palestinians (including Arab citizens of Israel) commemorate the Nakba with pageants and protests (sometimes violent) that express longing for a lost paradise. Every year, the legend grows of the evil deeds committed by the Zionists in 1948, crimes routinely equated with the Holocaust.

Echoing the Nakba narrative is an international leftist coalition that celebrates the Palestinians as the last victims of Western racism and colonialism. The only just compensation for the Nakba, say the Palestinians and their allies, is to give the refugees of Lydda and other Palestinian cities the “right of return” to their former homes in Israel.

Palestinian leaders know that there can be no serious negotiations for peace unless they explicitly renounce the right of return, which is really another way of calling for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. Shavit too understands this, and must know that his interpretation of the 1948 expulsion from Lydda will be used as an argument for the Palestinian right of return, as well as to question Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state.

In the concluding paragraph of the Lydda chapter Shavit writes that he recently went up to the highest point in the area and looked down on Lydda as it is today. This started him thinking again about the tragedy that occurred six decades earlier. “Fory-five years after Zionism came into the Lydda valley in the name of the Kishinev pogrom, Zionism instigated a human catastrophe in the Lydda valley,” Shavit writes. And now he imagines that he sees the awful column of Lydda’s refugees still marching: “So many years have passed, and yet the column is still marching east. For columns like the column of Lydda never stop marching.”

It is a gift box to Mahmoud Abbas and to haters of Israel, worldwide.

Contrary to many of Shavit’s reviewers, there is nothing courageous about this kind of writing that is plainly wrong on the facts and relies on a false historical interpretation to enforce its moral logic. The refugees of Lydda may still be marching in Shavit’s vivid but distorted imagination, but in reality they and their descendants – now totaling 5-7 million souls – have been locked up for the past 65 years in miserable refugee camps. It is not because of Zionism that they are still there. Rather it’s their own leaders and the Arab regimes who want them to remain locked up.

This is a worse crime than the Lydda expulsions. It constitutes the only refugee problem in the world that the international community and the UN have refused to solve by integration of the refugees in their host countries. And yet there is a certain perverse logic to this policy, since it allows Palestinian leaders to continue feeding the refugees a daily diet of Jew hatred, along with the illusion that someday they will be returning in triumph to their homes in Lydda and other Israeli cities. Meanwhile the 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel are the only Arabs in the region living in a free and democratic society and enjoy the highest standard of living among the Arabs of the Middle East.

Unfortunately, Ari Shavit’s “black box” of Lydda does not contain any of these hard truths. It is a gift box to Mahmoud Abbas and to haters of Israel, worldwide. And that is the so far unacknowledged “tragedy” of Shavit’s book.

Visitor Comments: 16

One paragraph in to the article, and I'm already deeply suspicious of the book.

(10)
Barbara Dagen,
February 25, 2014 6:50 PM

Thank you Sol Stern

I am thrilled that Sol Stern wrote this article to counter the horrible image Ari Shavit gave in his book to the miraculous rise of the State of Israel. Unfortunately ,Shavit's book will only add legitimacy to the already worldwide rising tide of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment. Even well meaning Jews who are unaware of the historical rise of Israel with accept Shavit's story .

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(9)
Lillian Tobin,
February 19, 2014 9:43 AM

Compassion misplaced

It is astonishing that men like Ari Shavit, the Jewish do -gooders of the world, have only compassion with our enemies and cringe before the world in abject submission. They are so fearful of being "unliked" and not accepted by an uncaring world who don't seem to be able to accept the Jew, that they are even willing to betray their own people. Sol Stern has it right - he presents the story as it was. Those of us who lived through that period remember it well. And those of us who lived through the "Holocaust eraAnd those of us who survived the Holocaust, also remember the callousness of the Western countries by refusing to give us shelter from the mad fury of the Nazi regime and their collaborators. It is almost cynical that they find it so easy to sympathize with the so-called Palestinian Arabs whose history consists of many massacres of Palestinian Jews (i.e. Hebron, etc.)upon the incitement of their leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem. These incidents took place BEFORE the Jewish community won their independence. It is time to stop reviling Zionism as something evil or racial. Zionism is the expression of Jewish nationhood and is mentioned in the Bible hundreds of times. Zionism should be, and is by many, revered as the Jewish Liberation movement. There never was a comparable Palestinian Arab movement. They were perfectly willing to live under various caretakers, the Turkish Empire and then the British Mandate.

(8)
Theodor Rebarber,
February 19, 2014 7:42 AM

Exellent, in-depth review

Thank you to Sol Stern for this fine review. As for Shavit, the reason people like him are comfortable smearing the creation of the only Jewish state and promoting the "narrative" of the terrorists is because too many Jews are (socially) forgiving or tolerant of such behavior. Just because he writes a few chapters that are positive does not excuse the lies, which are then quoted to support the BDS movement as well as anti-Semitism more broadly. Shavit is no fool, so he understands this perfectly, and doesn't mind.

(7)
Rinah,
February 17, 2014 8:07 AM

A balanced insight Sol

Jewish life and living needs to reflect the balance of justice and mercy (unlike Islam which is all justice and Christianity which is all mercy). Any wonder why our prophets say that the Nations will come to the Jewish people in the 'End of Days' and say "let us go with you for we heard that Elohim is with you". Let us keep the balance! The Nations rely upon us and we need to rely on God.

Sheila Novitz,
February 18, 2014 5:47 AM

An excellent and balanced review.

Excuse me, Rinah, but since when is Christianity "all mercy"? Do you recall the Crusades and Inquisitions, and Christian Europe's attitude to Jews? The thousands of pogroms, on a regular basis? The terror in which Jews lived, just so that we could practise our religion? And Europe's attitude now, to Israel, Jews and Zionism? It is the height of ugliness. And let me assure you, as I have lived amongst Christians all my life, that few of them adhere to the injunctions of Jesus, and there is precious little mercy amongst them.

Anonymous,
February 18, 2014 10:38 AM

seems that Rinah is correct

The quote was Christianity [not Christians]is all about mercy.Can't live with turn the other cheek.If one comes to kill you kill him first.There is a balance needed.That was the point

(6)
Jack bender,
February 17, 2014 12:08 AM

Their own worst enemy

As usual we have a really smart Jew who wants to sell books...so he gives a piece of grist for the self hating liberal Jews to chew on...so what else is new..he can now join Friedman and a bunch other so.called intellectuals jewish writers poets and rabbis in the Parthenon of traitors to their own

Lillian Tobin,
February 19, 2014 9:53 AM

Jewish traitors - Jewish fools

Jack is right. Considering that we are supposed to be a smart, thinking people, we seem to have more than our share of fools. The need for acceptance and to "please" have taken over the psyche of these people.

(5)
Jeff,
February 16, 2014 9:02 PM

Is Mr. Stern correct...and everyone else is wrong?

Reading Mr. Stern's commentary, I was struck by his apparent attitude of "Everyone else is wrong, so you should listen to me." By attempting to negate every other positive review or accolade, Mr. Stern is trying to set himself up as the definitive authority on the subject of Lydda and other early battles. Yet, he fails to ever tell the reader why we should believe him. That's disappointing, to say the least.

(4)
M. Instasmu,
February 16, 2014 7:47 PM

Sentimentality

Sometimes Ari Shavit gets maudlin masquerading as moral outrage just to prove what a sensitive guy he is. Also, he is in love with poetic language and sweeps of history so he has been known to inflate real events to suit that melodramatic impulse. The curse of a writer more interested in rhetoric than truth. He also likes being unpredictable and controversial - that gets attention. Also, he loves that his American editor buddies give him kudos for exposing dark underbellies whether they exist or not (sometimes they exist, sometimes not.) He enjoys his fame. Too bad he doesn't understand that his fame gives him extra responsibility to be accurate as his hand-wringing exaggerations or lies of omission/context will be used by the Jew haters to incite more Jew hatred and violence against Jews. They've used them before - I've seen quotes from his articles on neo-Nazi websites more than once.

(3)
Aviel,
February 16, 2014 6:08 PM

SEEMS TO ME THIS BOOK WON'T HELP OR DAMAGE THE PROSPECTS RE ANT PEACE

"Shavit’s perverse interpretation of Lydda not only damages the cause of defending Zionism against its many present day enemies, but it also undermines the possibility of a realistic, compromise peace with the Palestinians.

It seems to me the possibility of a realistic peace with the Palestinians not forthcoming has nothing to do with this book. When the majority of the non Islamic world sided with Israel, and the Jewish world was almost unanimous in it's support The Arabs would not accept any compromise that Israel thought it could live with[a return to modified 1967 borders]. Today with much more of the world on the Palestinian side of the conflict , and the the Jewish world itself much more divided who would reasonably expect the Palestinians to give up on their dream to end the Jewish State. In the meantime compared to the Arabs in neighboring counties those living in Israel proper, and even under "occupation" are doing relatively well compared to their neighbors and they can hold their heads high in sticking to their goal.They have patience. For peace to come it seems to me more Jews need to come live in Israel ,keep building and settling the land and show the world that this is their promised land and that they are here to stay. This is particularly true of the Orthodox community that have the majority of the children and believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by the Creator. Seems to me unrealistic to expect the Arabs to be more Zionist than the Jews..

(2)
Anonymous,
February 16, 2014 4:39 PM

Does it matter?

What happened then has little bearing on talks today. Both sides have third generations now who are being brought up in opposing sides. I'm Jewish, and therefore tied to Eretz Yisrael, but that does not diminish the ties to the land the Arabs have. What bothers me the most is all of the opportunities the PA has had to accept a Two State solution and always refuses any of it. That undeniably keeps violence alive and is that the fault of Zionism in 1948 or is it the fault of the PA today? Almost every country on the planet was conquered by someone once so it's time to get over the occupation rambles and actually work toward a solution - that takes two fair sides. There have never been two fair sides at the table where Jews are concerned with one exception: Hashem's side. Until the Palestinians negotiate fairly, more children will be born into a war zone on both sides and we don't need to consult Freud's or Einstein's memoirs to understand what happens next. If Jews did not exist, someone would invent us just so Anti-Jewry could exist. "Semitism" never existed. I pray that this makes all of us pray more for peace in the Holy Land and less for revenge. kol tuv.

(1)
Anonymous,
February 16, 2014 4:19 PM

No one is perfect.

The biggest threat to peace in the middle east isn't Mr. Shavit's book.
It is the fact that people have been warring for so long, they don't know of, or remember any other way to be.
Fear of the unknown.

Margarita,
February 18, 2014 3:39 PM

books are problem

books like that, like any other distortion is a problem for things are not happening in a vacuum - there always politics. books which portrait the situation in this black colours, with factual errors will become a text book in a few places with the idea of "even they" can see the difference and "there are a few brave ...". like a few other professors, writers like that get horrible ideas to doubting heads and thus causing new politics to arise. once there, this new politics is having very racist taste. so i would rather put it as not books alone cause problems........

Dvirah,
February 18, 2014 6:43 PM

Not True of Israel

In Israel we know exactly what to do with our Army should the fighting end - Sherut Le'umi (commuity service)!

I just got married and have an important question: Can we eat rice on Passover? My wife grew up eating it, and I did not. Is this just a matter of family tradition?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

The Torah instructs a Jew not to eat (or even possess) chametz all seven days of Passover (Exodus 13:3). "Chametz" is defined as any of the five grains (wheat, spelt, barley, oats, and rye) that came into contact with water for more than 18 minutes. Chametz is a serious Torah prohibition, and for that reason we take extra protective measures on Passover to prevent any mistakes.

Hence the category of food called "kitniyot" (sometimes referred to generically as "legumes"). This includes rice, corn, soy beans, string beans, peas, lentils, peanuts, mustard, sesame seeds and poppy seeds. Even though kitniyot cannot technically become chametz, Ashkenazi Jews do not eat them on Passover. Why?

Products of kitniyot often appear like chametz products. For example, it can be hard to distinguish between rice flour (kitniyot) and wheat flour (chametz). Also, chametz grains may become inadvertently mixed together with kitniyot. Therefore, to prevent confusion, all kitniyot were prohibited.

In Jewish law, there is one important distinction between chametz and kitniyot. During Passover, it is forbidden to even have chametz in one's possession (hence the custom of "selling chametz"). Whereas it is permitted to own kitniyot during Passover and even to use it - not for eating - but for things like baby powder which contains cornstarch. Similarly, someone who is sick is allowed to take medicine containing kitniyot.

What about derivatives of kitniyot - e.g. corn oil, peanut oil, etc? This is a difference of opinion. Many will use kitniyot-based oils on Passover, while others are strict and only use olive or walnut oil.

Finally, there is one product called "quinoa" (pronounced "ken-wah" or "kin-o-ah") that is permitted on Passover even for Ashkenazim. Although it resembles a grain, it is technically a grass, and was never included in the prohibition against kitniyot. It is prepared like rice and has a very high protein content. (It's excellent in "cholent" stew!) In the United States and elsewhere, mainstream kosher supervision agencies certify it "Kosher for Passover" -- look for the label.

Interestingly, the Sefardi Jewish community does not have a prohibition against kitniyot. This creates the strange situation, for example, where one family could be eating rice on Passover - when their neighbors will not. So am I going to guess here that you are Ashkenazi and your wife is Sefardi. Am I right?

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (1194-1270), known as Nachmanides, and by the acronym of his name, Ramban. Born in Spain, he was a physician by trade, but was best-known for authoring brilliant commentaries on the Bible, Talmud, and philosophy. In 1263, King James of Spain authorized a disputation (religious debate) between Nachmanides and a Jewish convert to Christianity, Pablo Christiani. Nachmanides reluctantly agreed to take part, only after being assured by the king that he would have full freedom of expression. Nachmanides won the debate, which earned the king's respect and a prize of 300 gold coins. But this incensed the Church: Nachmanides was charged with blasphemy and he was forced to flee Spain. So at age 72, Nachmanides moved to Jerusalem. He was struck by the desolation in the Holy City -- there were so few Jews that he could not even find a minyan to pray. Nachmanides immediately set about rebuilding the Jewish community. The Ramban Synagogue stands today in Jerusalem's Old City, a living testimony to his efforts.

It's easy to be intimidated by mean people. See through their mask. Underneath is an insecure and unhappy person. They are alienated from others because they are alienated from themselves.

Have compassion for them. Not pity, not condemning, not fear, but compassion. Feel for their suffering. Identify with their core humanity. You might be able to influence them for the good. You might not. Either way your compassion frees you from their destructiveness. And if you would like to help them change, compassion gives you a chance to succeed.

It is the nature of a person to be influenced by his fellows and comrades (Rambam, Hil. De'os 6:1).

We can never escape the influence of our environment. Our life-style impacts upon us and, as if by osmosis, penetrates our skin and becomes part of us.

Our environment today is thoroughly computerized. Computer intelligence is no longer a science-fiction fantasy, but an everyday occurrence. Some computers can even carry out complete interviews. The computer asks questions, receives answers, interprets these answers, and uses its newly acquired information to ask new questions.

Still, while computers may be able to think, they cannot feel. The uniqueness of human beings is therefore no longer in their intellect, but in their emotions.

We must be extremely careful not to allow ourselves to become human computers that are devoid of feelings. Our culture is in danger of losing this essential aspect of humanity, remaining only with intellect. Because we communicate so much with unfeeling computers, we are in danger of becoming disconnected from our own feelings and oblivious to the feelings of others.

As we check in at our jobs, and the computer on our desk greets us with, "Good morning, Mr. Smith. Today is Wednesday, and here is the agenda for today," let us remember that this machine may indeed be brilliant, but it cannot laugh or cry. It cannot be happy if we succeed, or sad if we fail.

Today I shall...

try to remain a human being in every way - by keeping in touch with my own feelings and being sensitive to the feelings of others.

With stories and insights,
Rabbi Twerski's new book Twerski on Machzor makes Rosh Hashanah prayers more meaningful. Click here to order...